Old School

Democrats seek documents as Bush says, ‘I’d have done everything in my power’
May 17 -- "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people."

NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES
WASHINGTON, May 17 — The Bush administration braced for a prolonged political battle as Democratic lawmakers demanded the White House hand over documents that warned as early as 1999 that Osama bin Laden’s followers might crash an explosives-laden aircraft into a government building like the Pentagon.

Old School

FACING HIS CRITICS, President Bush said in a Rose Garden address Friday that although he was briefed on terror threats last August, “Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people.”
Among the documents that Democrats want to see are a classified CIA analysis given to Bush on Aug. 6 and a pre-Sept. 11 FBI memo that warned headquarters that many Middle Eastern men were training at American flight schools.
News of another federal report raised eyebrows Friday when word spread that it had warned in 1999 that terrorists might be planning to crash a plane into a government building.
'99 suicide scenario floated
“Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida’s Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, or the White House,” said the report, which was prepared for the National Intelligence Council and shared with other federal agencies.

The unclassified report — titled the “Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?” — described the suicide hijacking as one of several possible retribution attacks al-Qaida might seek for the 1998 U.S. airstrike against bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan.
The report noted that an al-Qaida-linked man first arrested in the Philippines in 1995 and later convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had suggested such a suicide jetliner mission.
“Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters,” said the report, written by the Federal Research Division, an arm of the Library of Congress that provides research for various federal agencies under contracts.
The report contrasts with Bush administration officials’ assertions that no one in government had imagined an attack like Sept. 11 before that time.

“I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile,” national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday.
Asked about the report by NBC’s Campbell Brown at Friday’s press briefing, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer described it as a psychological, sociological evaluation of terrorism.
“I don’t think it’s a surprise to anybody that terrorists think in evil ways,” he said. “It is not a piece of intelligence information suggesting that we had information about a specific plan.”

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The news of Bush’s August briefing set off a furor and precipitated a public-relations blitz by the White House, which sent forth an extraordinary number of senior advisers to defend the president as Democrats, and even some Republicans, sought answers.

• Profiles of suspects; leads being followed

“Why did it take eight months for us to receive this information? And what specific actions were taken by the White House in response?” Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said. “I’m not going to jump to any conclusions, but it’s hard to understand why the information was not released.”
House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., posed a variation on the famous Watergate-era question: What did the president know and when did he know it?
Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, “There was a lot of information. I believe, and others believe, if it had been acted on properly we may have had a different situation on Sept. 11.”

BUSH UPSET BY INSINUATIONS
Bush, clearly, was upset by the insinuations. “Unfortunately, in Washington second-guessing has become second nature,” he said.
The administration argued there was no information about a specific threat, and Vice President Dick Cheney warned Democrats to tread lightly.
“They need to be very cautious not to seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions that were made by some today that the White House had advance information that would have prevented the tragic attacks of 9/11,” Cheney said. “Such commentary is thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war.”
WashPost: Unshared clues, unshaped policy
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Friday on NBC’s “Today” that he was unaware of the FBI memo “until it showed up in the press very recently.”

May 16 — National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said that “even in retrospect,” the potential threat was too vague to justify a public alert.

“The vast majority of the reports and scraps of information that come in tend to be eventually discounted as not being valid, or, at the minimum, not being actionable,” Rumsfeld said.
In Madrid, the 15-nation European Union, which rallied behind Washington’s anti-terrorism campaign after Sept. 11, declined comment on the latest revelations.
“I don’t think it is our goal to get into internal debates about what could have been done or how certain things could have been avoided,” Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique said. “Hindsight is a wonderful thing but we can only work to ensure that such events never happen again.”
Spain holds the rotating presidency of the EU.

RICE: PRE-SEPT. 11 ALERT TOO GENERAL
On Thursday, Rice said the Bush administration chose not to tell the public about a potential al-Qaida threat to hijack airliners a month before Sept. 11 because it did not want to risk shutting down civilian aviation “for very general warnings.”
Rice repeated the administration’s insistence that the al-Qaida information referred only to a general threat from bin Laden involving jetliners. She said Bush and U.S. intelligence did not know that suicide hijackers were specifically plotting to use planes as missiles, as they did against the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.
At the same time, the FAA was issuing a series of memos to airlines, known as “information circulars,” warning of heightened threats to commercial aviation, primarily overseas.
“There was a lot of chatter in the system” through June and July, Rice said, enough that Bush eventually picked up on it himself and asked for the Aug. 6 briefing.

Today on MSNBC TV:

• What did President Bush know about hijackings? When did he know it? And, what did he do about it?

Asked by a reporter, “Why not tell Americans?” Rice replied: “You would have risked shutting down the American civil aviation system with such generalized information. You would have to think five, six, seven times about that, very, very hard.”
She added, “Even in hindsight, there was nothing in what was briefed to the president that you would go out and tell the people.”
“I want to reiterate it was not a warning,” said Rice, adding that the briefing focused on analysis of bin Laden’s history and operations. “There was no time, place or method mentioned.”

Members of Congress in both parties, however, said the information clearly indicated an imminent threat and suggested that the Sept. 11 attacks might have been averted.
The Senate Intelligence Committee plans to expand its investigation into what the administration knew before Sept. 11, Chairman Bob Graham, D-Fla., said Thursday. He and other members of the committee said the White House’s acknowledgment illustrated the degree to which U.S. intelligence agencies failed to coordinate their activities before Sept. 11.

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Sadly enough, the American People have little to choose from at election time!!

It seems to me, that it doesn't really matter which PUPPET get's elected!!

But I still believe if ya don't vote, ya got no right to bitch, so what's left??

Documents concerning these threats of terrorist attacks surfaced as early as 95'!!! Osama Bin Laden was involved with the first Tower bombings and other terrorist attacks!!
Defense plans and guidelines should have already been in place long ago!!!!!!!!

Old School

I think we had all made the right decision at election time Cowboy. But, the problem was the people's vote didn't count. There was this whole thing with the Supreme Court...and electoral colleges. I really think if Mr. Gore was elected we'd all be in a much different place right now.
I don't think the terrorism problem would've been containable by him. But, maybe they would not have attacked at all if they knew we had a strong government in power?
I know Al Gore is boring...I know Bill Clinton liked the ladies, and had bad taste in them as well. But, together they did alot more for the people who lived in the US...than anything either of the Bushes ever have.

right on justme..i couldnt agree more.....To me, Bill Clinton was one of the most influential and productive presidents in the last century....although he was great at his job, yes, he was a pig, and he paid dearly for his actions....whether it was fully deserved or not....but you know what? if i could I would have voted for him again! And if people actually studied their past leaders they'd notice that almost EVERY ONE did the same ting as clinton...JFK and marylin monroe, richard nixon, hoover, taft,not to mention all those early presidents who raped and a few impregnating their black slaves. Did you know that Lyndon B Johnson was in the middle of having sex with an intern when his wife walked in on him, soon after a buzzer system was installed throughout the whitehouse to warn the president of his wifes arrival....? And now that Bush is under fire for something one hundred times worse, its being downplayed so dramatically...

Ive been hearing about these old documents surfacing pertaining to the Bush administration knowing ahead of time about these attacks..whether this is true or not, I dont know...but what I keep wondering is how the republicans would react if this had happened to bill clinton?...

Sorry to disagree with the majority here, but I hardly think Gore would have provided a stronger government than Bush does. Perhaps he would have put the twin towers in a lockbox though--that might have worked.

Old School

There's this picture in the cover of the book anti-terrorism activities or something like that where there's a picture of the WTC towers and in the upper part of the torn there's an cross sight and an aero-plane approaching it. it's used by FBI, CIA, and the military.